Introducing Stakeey — Leveling The Playing Field For Small Scale Artists

Stakeey started out after one of our co-founders tried to buy a pair of shoes online. One of our co-founders had attended college in South Africa and it only seemed sensible that one could buy a pair of shoes online but at the time no online shops existed in Zimbabwe that were selling shoes online. We saw this as an opportunity to solve a problem that virtually no one was attending to and we went on to set up a Shopify store which sourced kicks online for African markets that are under-served in the e-commerce world.

From that experience we sat down and plotted beyond the convenience of buying a pair of shoes online and over-time that has allowed us to build a hybrid marketplace which allows anyone to operate their own online store while allowing us to stock only that which our market audience demands. After having tried different product categories many of which proved unsuccessful due to the extensive network of brokers and couriers that are involved in importing merchandise in a land-locked country, we have settled for a hybrid model which allows for steady growth of market share as we explore stocking additional product categories while placing emphasis on locally manufactured products such as art and crafts.

With the arts and crafts market as an entry point into the online shopping market we aim to do to art galleries what Amazon has done to bookshops and to do this more than just the internet is needed to disrupt the art gallery model which has existed for centuries. Our mission is to harness the most effective technologies in order to level the playing field for artists in remote places who might otherwise not receive the same traffic audience as an artist whose work is displayed on an art gallery on Long Street in the same way Amazon has democratized the publishing of books and the market audience for small scale authors.

We think the world of art collectors and the people from whom it originates is much more connected than art galleries would have us imagine and we believe the decentralized web will play a massive role in magnifying the fundamental peer to peer transactions upon which the art gallery model is built. To magnify these fundamental peer to peer transactions we are going to employ a hybrid model of a centrally hosted marketplace as well as a decentralized application which allows art collectors to collect their favourite art pieces in the form of blockchain tokens instead of physically storing the pieces and bearing the risk of wear and tear or theft. This concept of tokenization has already been explored in industries such as real estate and we think spreading this concept to the art industry can potentially broaden the market audience for small scale artists while matching up to investments such as stocks and commodities due to the appreciating nature of art pieces and the marginally discounted liquidity offered by tokens traded on a decentralized marketplace.

We aim to stabilize the cash circulation difficulties by providing a safe and secure online payment system which also accommodates payment in cryptocurrencies, while providing small-scale artists with an alternative to the commission-laden model of the modern day art gallery. With one click away from receiving a door ring for your order, Stakeey allows you to optimally enjoy your shopping experience from the comfort of your home or any other place of your choice.

Our ordering process is designed to give you an efficient way to track the process, while you also get constant updates from our delivery team and our soon to-be in beta delivery app. We also welcome you to contact us, if you feel there is something we can do to optimize your shopping experience, do let us know as we aim to keep an engaged youth which will contribute to the upbringing of a community that make their ideas known and influence trends.

One of the most common questions we receive is, “What does ‘Stakeey’ actually mean?” , so we will drop the answer to that here. Stakeey is essentially a play-on word from the concept of Proof Of Stake, similar to how users on a Proof Of Stake network are able to earn cryptocurrencies by staking their cryptocurrency holdings, so can artists and collectors by staking their art holdings on our decentralized application as well as fractionalized ownership marketplace. Initially we had named the project ‘Stake’ but we then decided to add the ‘ey’ after failing to secure our preferred domain name under ‘Stake’.